Decolonization in a Cold War Climate

After World War II, activists in colonized regions in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East used the postwar chaos and the cold war to achieve their long-held goal of liberation. At war’s end, the colonial powers attempted to reimpose their control as if they were still dominant around the world. Yet colonized peoples had been on the front lines defending the West; and as in World War I, they had witnessed the full barbarism of Western warfare. Like African American soldiers in the U.S. army, they experienced discrimination even while saving the West and, returning home, did not receive the rights of citizenship promised them. Moreover, successive wars had allowed local industries in the colonies to develop, while industry in the imperial homelands fell into decline.

The path to independence—a process called decolonization—was paved with difficulties. In India, Hindus and Muslims battled one another even though they shared the goal of eliminating the British. In the Middle East and North Africa, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movements—that is, those wanting to bring together all Arabs or all Muslims as the basis for decolonization—might seem to have been unifying forces. Yet many Muslims were not Arab, not all Arabs were Muslim, and Islam itself encompassed a range of beliefs. Differences among religious beliefs, ethnic groups, and cultural practices—many of them invented or promoted by the colonizers to divide and rule—worked against political unity. Despite these complications, various peoples in what was coming to be called the third world succeeded in overthrowing imperialism, while the United States and the Soviet Union rushed in to co-opt them for the cold war.